


No Place Like Home

by MortemGrimalkinMessor



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-09-02 19:40:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16793473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MortemGrimalkinMessor/pseuds/MortemGrimalkinMessor
Summary: After Voldemort died, he was spat back out into the year 1987. With a bit more insight than he’d had ten years ago, Voldemort decided to take in the very brat that killed him in the first place to avoid death yet again. Yes, that...may have not been the smartest decision either.





	No Place Like Home

**Author's Note:**

> I see a lot of Harry adopts Tom fics and not enough Voldemort adopts Harry fics, so here we are!
> 
> Heads up, if you’re looking for Slytherin!Harry or Dark!Harry, you’ve come to the wrong place.

‘ _Well_ ,’ The terror of Lord Voldemort thought idly as he floated in the thick blackness of the afterlife. ‘ _That was unexpected._ ’

Perhaps not as unexpected as he would’ve liked, but it wasn’t like he was going to admit that anytime soon.

Other wisps of silvery light slid sluggishly past him, and he had to wonder where he was. He knew he was dead, of course, and after all that he’d done, he didn’t exactly have high expectations for anything like the pearly gates. Maybe this was purgatory, or the dreaded, fabled hell. However he didn’t feel like he was suffering much. If anything, he felt...calm. A radical change from his volatile state from before, where his moods swung so dangerously fast from one to the other he’d almost given himself whiplash. So easily angered, so easily disturbed and unsettled, he hadn’t had a moment of peace in many, _many_ years.

A consequence of ripping his soul beyond repair, he was sure.

But perhaps, because of that, he had bypassed heaven, hell, and valhalla entirely, and now was in some sort of limbo, and those other lights among the darkness were the other splices of his soul, other pieces of what was once Tom Riddle before their protective containers were destroyed. A thought that should've made him angry, surely, but he felt nothing but calm. Perhaps he did not have a body to feel emotions with any longer; though even as a wraith in Albania he had been able to rage and stew and plot as he searched for another vessel.

He regretted that. All the time he’d wasted, whether it be plotting useless revenge or forcing his followers into submission or obsessing over a teenage boy, that he could have used to further his goals instead. If he were to admit any of his mistakes—and it was a miracle in itself that he was admitting that he made them in the first place—it would be that one. To be nothing but honest with himself, here in the heavy blackness of his personal purgatory, he forced himself to accept that had he not been so distracted by his quest for the Potter boy’s death, he could have accomplished his goals in a couple of years.

There was a light. A light much brighter than that of the wisps beside him bloomed into being up ahead, like an inverted black hole. He felt himself being pulled towards it, and wondered if this was death after all. For all his fear of death in life, he couldn’t bring himself to care.

A slow warmth stole over him, as inescapable and complete as the calm, and what was left of his being became light and airy. The light before him seemed to pull away the heady darkness as it tugged him in.

And he realized that he did, in fact, _feel_. As could he see, whether he had physical eyes to look with or not. He felt himself stretch as he disappeared into the light at last, and he saw an open expanse of blue above him, tufts of whiteness strewn haphazardly across it.

Then he was falling.

A faceful of dirt, with no landing, and he gasped to fill his abruptly renewed lungs. Fingers, hands, arms—he hacked out a cough and pushed himself up on trembling limbs, stunned. His fingers dug into soft grass, rocks bit into his knees, and the taste of damp earth lingered on his palate.

He was in the forest, the sky clear above him, the sun a dearly missed heat on his skin as he knelt there and stared at his hands. He was completely starkers, but he ignored that little fact in favor of studying the pale tone of his skin, no longer gray and bone white, and the healthy layer of fat and muscle tensed beneath his skin. With shaking hands he reached up and felt at his face. Lips, a nose, eyebrows. A little further up revealed a thick head of hair. All things he hadn’t realized he missed.

Despite all of that, as impossible as it was, he knew he had a more pressing issue. Somehow, someway, he was alive. More alive than he had been before his death. Truly, blessedly alive.

Tom Marvolo Riddle stared up at the sky, and _breathed_.

{•}

“BOY!”

Harry yelped and sat up abruptly, only to bang his head on the lowest stair. “C-Coming!” He hissed and rubbed his forehead as he scrambled off his cot. He stumbled out of his cupboard and down the hall, his hand shaking slightly as he pushed open the door to the kitchen. He was immediately presented with his Uncle’s fleshy, purple face scrunched up in frustration.

“Why,” Vernon seethed, his mustache and chins quivering. “Did I just receive a call from the principal telling me that you climbed onto the roof of the school building?”

Harry began to shift from foot to foot, anxious and antsy, ready to bolt at any given moment. He had heard once that you didn’t need to be faster than the bear, just faster than the person with you. Uncle Vernon very much reminded him of a bear sometimes. And Harry was very fast. He had outrun his cousin Dudley on more than one occasion, and he had no doubt that he could do it again if need be.

“I-I didn’t!” Harry stammered out quickly as his Uncle’s face turned an alarming shade of puce. “I didn’t climb up there. I was just—just running, and I jumped, and I-I just _landed_ on the roof.” He tried to explain, because that was the only explanation he had. Having remembered that bears could sense fear, Harry stood up a little straighter and puffed out his chest to look bigger.

“You...just landed there.” Vernon said it in such a tone that Harry went abruptly pale.

“I didn’t do anything!” Harry argued with as much strength as he could muster, even while he felt like running. “It was like—”

“DON’T SAY IT!” Vernon bellowed furiously. His torso heaved with rage and he directed a fat, trembling finger at the hall. “Cupboard...no meals... _now_.”

“But I didn’t—”

“Now!” Vernon roared, and Harry had the good sense to turn and bolt then.

He skidded down the hall and banged his hip on the cupboard door as he scrambled back inside it and shut the door behind him. He crouched on top of his cot on all fours, grip white-knuckled on the edge of his mattress, his heart beating a tattoo against his ribs as his Uncle stomped by, locked his cupboard, and stormed up the stairs.

Dust fell lightly on Harry’s head, but he continued to stare with wide eyes and a racing pulse at his door as if Vernon would suddenly open it and wrench him out to yell at him some more. Maybe he’d gone to get The Belt. Harry hated The Belt.

Eventually, as the sunlight faded and there was little to no sound from above him, Harry gradually relaxed. He let out a sigh and released his death grip on the edge of his cot, then sat back on his haunches feeling boneless. His stomach rumbled irritably and he grimaced. He had only eaten a piece of burnt toast and a few crackers today, and he’d been sent to bed without dinner, along with the promise of no food for however long his Uncle Vernon decided he needed to be punished.

Harry James Potter plucked a spider off his pillow, curled up on his side, and wished he were anywhere else.


End file.
